I’m not reaching my target audience online – what am I doing wrong?

I’m not reaching my target audience online – what am I doing wrong?

Do you know who your perfect customer or client is? What their interests are, how old they are, and where they’re located? If not, then you might be targeting the wrong people through your online marketing.

This can be a huge time waster and financial drain for any business. So, how can you make sure you’re reaching the right audience for your business?

If you’re finding that your target audience is out of reach or you’re not sure who your perfect customer or client is, then you’ll need to get a few things right.

Get to know your audience better

First thing’s first, you’ll need to understand who your audience is. How can you do this?

Social listening

Use your social channels to find out who is engaging with your brand and what they’re saying about you. Listening tools can help streamline this process.

Facebook ads

Facebook’s company page reporting, Page Insights, helps you discover information about the people interacting with your page. In addition to this information, you’ll also want to know if this audience is one that will purchase your products or service. Here’s where running ads can help. If you run ads on Facebook you can easily find out details about your customers, including their interests, demographics and online behaviours. And once a customer converts, you can set up your ads to target new people with similar interests, demographics and online behaviours. This function is called lookalike audiences and can help advertisers reach new valuable customers within their target audience. This information is not only useful for your Facebook ads, it can be used to target more effectively across all of your marketing campaigns.

Search ads

Like Facebook, Google can help simplify the process of getting to know your ideal customer. Find out what your audience is searching online in relation to your business or industry and the keywords that they’re using. This information can help you to optimise your ads, and can also dictate the way you communicate with your audience through your social channels and website.

Tailor your online content and campaigns to your target audience

Now that you’re getting to know your audience a little better, it’s time to target them in the right way.

Website content

By understanding your customer or clients’ online behaviours, on your website in particular, you can optimise your content and navigation, as well as your look and feel. Keep your perfect customer or client in mind when making each of these changes.

Ads

Facebook and Google have stacks of data on the online behaviours of their users and therefore make it very easy for advertisers to target highly tailored audiences. A well thought out targeting strategy combined with killer creative is a winning combo.

Social posts

Understanding how people interact with your brand online will help you to communicate with them better. Tailor your social content according to how your customers interact with your brand and how they engage with the digital landscape. You’ll also want to be choosing the right time to post. Let’s say you run an ecommerce website and you’ve noticed that most of your customers are from overseas, in a different time zone. Targeting them when they’re most likely asleep would be a waste of time. You’d want to make sure to schedule at a time appropriate for their time zone.

Be real

Last but not least, it’s important to be authentic online. People are constantly having to filter through tonnes of content to find what is real and relevant to them. This means that people want to see the human in your brand. Be specific in the way that you communicate with your audience and ensure it is a two way conversation.